The eating habits in Japan have come to be increasingly irregular due to the recent environmental changes. In particular, a serious problem lies in the unbalance of nutrients such as excess energy intake or inadequate intake of dietary fibers and minerals owing to an increase in a meal skipping ratio, solitary meal, and excessive dependency on processed foods. Such unbalance of nutrients is one of risk factors for life-style related diseases, so it is essential that the nutrient balance be optimized for a healthy life. It has been elucidated that sufficient intake of vegetables and fruits is useful for correcting the unbalanced nutrient intake. In Japan, the target intake amount of vegetables is set at 350 g or greater (standard: 292 g, according to the national nutrition survey in 1997) in “National Health Promotion Strategy for 21 Century (Health Japan 21)”. In U.S.A., it is recommended to take at least five kinds of vegetables and at least three kinds of fruits a day in order to prevent life-style related diseases (5+3 campaign). With such a background existing, a method aimed at processing vegetables or fruits into a form suitable for smooth drinking is significantly needed from the standpoint of promoting a healthy life-style on a nationwide scale.
Processing of vegetables or fruits into juice is an effective means for facilitating the intake of them. Those unwilling to eat vegetables and fruits, however, are still loath to take these nutrients even when served in a form of juice, because of their unfavorable tendency toward the grassy odor or taste and a viscous texture of the juice. As one of the solutions for such a problem, there is a known vegetable juice and/or fruit juice having a less grassy odor and less bitter taste, which was developed as a consequence of focusing on the hydrophilicity-hydrophobicity balance of diacyl glyceride for a grassy odor component or bitterness component of the vegetable juice or fruit juice (Patent Document 1).
There are also other reports including a method of improving the taste of a vegetable juice or fruit juice, for example, a method using erythritol (Patent Document 2) which is one of sugar alcohols and a method using α-linked galacto-oligosaccharide (Patent Document 3) which is one of oligosaccharides, but such methods have a problem that a sweet taste of such components inevitably has an influence on the taste of the end product of the juice.
A method of improving the taste of a vegetable juice or fruit juice by adding thereto a carboxyl-containing water-soluble acidic polysaccharide is known (Patent Document 4), but it has a problem that a marked increase in the viscosity of the solution disturbs smooth drinking. In addition, such a vegetable and/or fruit composition emits a heated odor when subjected to heat sterilization treatment.    Patent Document 1: JP-A-7-51034    Patent Document 2: JP-A-9-117262    Patent Document 3: JP-A-2003-250486    Patent Document 4: JP-A-2003-116496.